14 Quotes by Benjamin Constant

Circumstances are quite unimportant, character is everything; in vain we break with outside things or people; we cannot break with ourselves. We change our circumstances, but we take with us into each new situation the torment we had hoped to leave behind, and as we cannot shake ourselves any better by a change of scene, we simply find that we have added remorse to regrets and misdeeds to sufferings.

No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being...

I detest that fatuity of mind which believes that what is explained is also excused; I hate that vanity which finds it interesting to describe the harm that it has done, and asks to be pitied at the end of its recital, and, as it patrols with impunity among the ruins for which it is responsible, gives to self-analysis the time which should be given to repentance.

Political liberty involves every citizen without exception in the examination and study of his most sacred interest. It aggrandizes the spirit, ennobles the mind, and establishes among all of them a sort of intellectual quality which makes for a people who are both glorious and powerful.

And besides, I hate the vanity of a mind which thinks it excuses what it explains, I hate the conceit which is concerned only with itself while narrating the evil it has done, which tries to arouse pity by self-description and which, appearing indestructible among the ruins, analyses itself when it should be repenting. I hate that weakness which is always blaming others for its own impotence and which cannot see that the trouble is not in its surroundings but in itself.